Most of them. Mostly those texts are thoeretical and not mirroring real world, more or less hopes where communities should evolve.
But can you answer to the question, please? Give me an example.
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Like I said, tons of actual examples in those topics. But here are a few (these are âreal worldâ in the sense that I would want and use these options if they existed):
- Shared user profiles and credentials between Discourse instances
- Activity visible (optionally) across public instances, get a better overall picture of who people are and what their interests and activities are
- Lower maintenance burden for anyone active in multiple forums who doesnât necessarily need/want a totally different profile in each one (obviously there should be options for having some settings unique between instances, or all settings if someone prefers)
- Settings could also be shared, e.g. perhaps you tend to always use particular notification settings, dark theme options, etc, etc. Wouldnât it be nice not to have to set it all on every new forum you join?
- Ability to Quote from posts on multiple Discourse instances just like quoting on a single instance
- Share 1 topic, a tag, or a whole category to another forum with similar or related interests
- For example you have Sports Forum A which talks about all sports, and then Sports Forums B and C, which talk about Basketball and American Football, respectively
- What if Forum A could, instead of having its own Categories for Basketball and Football, instead simply âsubscribeâ to/instantiate Forums B and C into its own Category structure
- Forum A gains in-depth discussion of topics which are within its area of overall interest (sports), and members of that overall sports forum can engage with more enthusiastic discussion of these sub-areas of interst
- Forums B and C get greater awareness by being âpart ofâ this bigger sports forum, and gain some users and interaction as well, but also maintain autonomy and control, not all categories need to be âsharedâ, and they can disconnect any time if they decide they donât like the result
- Or letâs say ActivityPub forum (hey, Discourse!) has a Category where they want to discuss existing and possible federated applications, and even advocate for federation in particular other applications/contexts (this is more or less what their Software Category is for, and hey thereâs a Discourse sub-category!)
- What if, in addition to the very few topics created in the Activity Pub forum itself to discuss Discourse, they could also easily include all topics from this forum which were tagged e.g. â#activitypubâ or âfediverseâ (or both!)
- Suddenly they see a lot more relevant discussions in their otherwise quiet and seemingly obscure Discourse sub-category
- ActivityPub and Fediverse experts get to see and engage with the perhaps skeptical about also curious and enthusiastic Discourse community
- Discourse community gets valuable, expert comments and insight from their forum members, without having to join their forum and move discussion there
If none of that seems compelling to you, then perhaps itâs just not something that is appealing for you. But it seems quite interesting to many people, and I also think that it may simply take actual implementations that people can try, can use, for it to really be clear how this could be beneficial.
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Your Post might be equally suited to this Topic: Federation support for Discourse?
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Thereâs also related discussion in Using Discourse as a social media platform - #12 by hellekin and onwards, and I think @merefield and others at Pavilion had and maybe still have interest to explore ActivityPub support, should there be funding available to do so?
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Any go topics on how to do this on meta or any pointers?
Is it possible to do the same with Telegram channels?
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